


Flesh and Blood

by fiendlikequeen



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Android!Jarvis, Androids, Cybernetics, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-01
Updated: 2013-04-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 18:28:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/665102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiendlikequeen/pseuds/fiendlikequeen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve visit to Tony's lab on S.H.I.E.L.D business leads him into the strange world of cybernetics and the even more complicated relationship between Tony and JARVIS.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Stark, what are you doing?” asked Steve. Courtesy of Pepper, he’d let himself into Tony’s lab and was now standing at the entrance, watching Tony tinkering away with some piece of machinery. What sort of machinery it might have been was lost on Steve.

“You know,” he said, not looking up. “I always knew I’d regret letting you get to know Pepper. As if the coffee dates weren’t enough, now she’s letting you in here. What’s next? Slumber parties? Movie nights? Please, leave me out of it when you two have sleepovers where you braid each other’s hair and talk about-“

“I’m here on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s behalf, Mr. Stark,” retorted Steve, and crossed his arms.

Now he had Tony’s attention, as he put down whatever it was he was working in – what was that, a piece of a new suit? – and looked up, wiping his hands on a rag.

“What, they couldn’t send an agent instead? Preferably young and pretty? Don’t get me wrong, Cap, you’re quite the pretty-“ he started.

Steve wasn’t in the mood for Tony’s witticisms at the moment.

“I’m here with an assignment, Stark,” he said, cutting Tony off and watching as the man raised his eyebrows, obviously not pleased at having been interrupted. “Here to ask you about a certain project you’re working o-“

“Who ratted? Pepper? Barton? Rhodey? No, wait,” said Tony, and narrowed his eyes, smirking just a touch. “It was Bruce, wasn’t it?”

Steve said nothing, but Tony seemed to know that he’d been right.

“Well, shit,” he said, and his tone was light and sarcastic. He laid one hand to his chest, though instead of holding his heart as though offended, he touched the arc reactor. “I thought Dr. Banner and I were friends.”

Steve felt the need to defend Bruce, whose intentions had been nothing but noble, and so he opened his mouth to speak, to protest, but Tony cut him off without a word.

“Let me guess, it’s about this,” he said, waving a hand toward the bench.

Steve really had no idea what the thing on the bench was, nor did he understand how it could be dangerous. Then again, Tony had built his first Iron Man suit in a cave while being held by terrorists, so pretty much anything he was working on could be theoretically a threat, which was probably the reason for Bruce's worry.

And Bruce's worry had been quite troubling. He'd paid Director Fury himself a visit, and had been so far from his usual, placid self that Fury had quietly ordered a few armed guards to stay close, in case what Bruce had not-so-affectionately dubbed "the other guy" would make an appearance.

“Dr. Banner made S.H.I.E.L.D aware of a certain level of hazard stemming from one of your projects. That one, I assume,” he said, inclining his head towards the workbench.

“What, S.H.I.E.L.D’s got a problem with cybernetics? What’s the matter with me building a Life Model Decoy? Well, not really a Life Model Decoy, since it’s not based on an existing person, but close enough,” replied Tony, and would have continued to ramble about whatever newfangled technology he was constructing had Steve not stopped him.

“Speak English, Stark,” he said.

“Oh, right. I forgot that senior citizens aren’t that good with technology. Still figuring out how to work a Blu-ray player, are you? I’m making an android, Captain,” he said, coming to the point of the sentence after his obligatory dig at Steve about his age.

“You’re making artificial life?” said Steve. He was appalled but not shocked. It seemed as though Tony Stark could construct anything, with his only limitation being his own moral code.

Or lack thereof, thought Steve.

“I’ve already made an A.I., and I don’t hear S.H.I.E.L.D complaining about that. Actually, JARVIS, has anyone complained about you?” he asked.

“Not to my knowledge, sir, and that knowledge is rather extensive,” remarked JARVIS. The A.I.’s snarky, sarcastic tone never failed to set Steve on edge. It sounded too realistic, too human, with too much emotion.

Tony smirked. “See? What’s the problem, then?”

“The problem, Mr. Stark, is that you can’t just create-“

“I already have! I’ve already got a fully-functioning A.I. with learning capabilities, problem solving abilities, and a healthy dose of snarkiness. Now I’m just giving JARVIS a body,” he said. “It’s not like it would make him more dangerous. What S.H.I.E.L.D doesn’t seem to get is that he could already hack every mainframe in the world in under an hour. Really, a physical form should be the least of their concerns.”

Steve’s eyebrows rose. He’d known JARVIS was a formidable invention, but hadn’t understood the very magnitude of his capabilities until that moment.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Stark, but is that supposed to make S.H.I.E.L.D feel more at ease, or less?” he said.

Tony looked like he was regretting his boasting momentarily. But any contrition quickly faded as he shrugged.

“You know I’ll have to tell Director Fury what exactly it is you’ve been working on? And what your intentions are?” said Steve.

“I’m sure he already knows. I’ll bet Banner’s sung like a canary already. You think it was jealousy that made him talk, Cap? You know, I’d be jealous of JARVIS, too. Jealous of the obviously brilliant mind that could create such a marvelous piece of technology. Oh, wait, that’s me, so I-” began Tony, already half-grinning with smug pride.

Steve willed himself not to hit Tony in the face as he ground his teeth and went on. “I expect someone will want to make sure you keep your promise of the fact that JARVIS’s new…”

“Body,” Tony supplied, and the very word bothered Steve for how human it made the A.I. seem.

“Yes,” he relented. “You’re going to make a lot of people very worried, Mr. Stark.”

“S.H.I.E.L.D encourages me to make suits of armour with advanced weapons technology. They’ve given me more than the green light to enhance those technologies as far as I can, too. You really think they’ll be worried about one, measly little android?” said Tony, and he snorted derisively. “No one’s ever worried about JARVIS before.”

“This is different,” countered Steve. For him, it was different on grounds that he knew Tony didn’t share. For him, life was something sacred, and to play God by creating it was tempting fate. But Tony, an atheist no doubt, could not possibly have shared those reservations.

Tony didn’t really have any reservations at all, come to think of it.

“Shall I show Captain Rogers out, sir?” asked JARVIS, breaking the silence that had fallen over the room.

“See? See how useful he is?” said Tony, gesturing to the empty air.

“Thank you, sir, but I think my true usefulness extends further than showing guests about your house,” replied JARVIS, with a dry wit that made Tony smile and Steve grimace uncomfortably at the humanity of it.

“You’re right. You help me out here. He can find his own way out,” said Tony. When he went back to the workbench and began to tinker once more, Steve sighed and showed himself out of the lab.

He’d wandered down a few hallways when he realized he didn’t actually know his way out of the house. Pepper had always shown him in, and now he stood there in a cavernous basement wondering which way to turn.

“The exit that will take you out is down the hall on your left, and up an elevator, sir,” stated a polite, accented voice. JARVIS, of course.

Steve took his direction and found himself in an elevator, the doors of which opened promptly as he arrived at them. He did not touch any buttons, as JARVIS obviously knew where he was going and would direct him there.

“Uh, JARVIS?” asked Steve, feeling a little foolish for talking to the empty air.

The A.I. responded promptly, sounding very nearly interested in Steve's question. “Yes, Captain Rogers?”

“How…how are you talking to me right now?” he asked.

“I am a divided entity, Captain Rogers. Like any computer, I multitask,” JARVIS replied. Steve could have sworn he heard a bit of haughtiness in JARVIS’s voice.

“Stark says you wouldn’t be a threat if you had a body. Do you think that’s true?” asked Steve, wondering if he’d get a straight answer. He hadn’t been able to get one out of Tony, but maybe he’d get one out of the A.I.

“Yes, sir. Given the current risks posed by any number of terrorist organizations, unstable governments, unscrupulous criminals, and ordinary people around the world, I would say that an A.I. designed and created by Mr. Stark is the least of your concerns. Most would consider me an asset, sir,” replied JARVIS.

Steve wondered how it was possible to want to hit an A.I. as he noted the pride and dry sarcasm in JARVIS’s tone.

Well, there was no doubt that JARVIS was a creation of Tony Stark’s, that was for sure. He had all his creator’s scathing cockiness, but it was veiled with a politeness that was so utterly human.

Also a politeness that Steve knew Tony was incapable of. It was like Tony had designed JARVIS to have all of his good qualities and none of his recklessness. Like JARVIS was sort of a sensible, more bearable version of Tony.

“Yeah, well we’ll see,” muttered Steve, and stepped out of the elevator.

“I wish you a pleasant flight, sir,” said JARVIS.

Steve grunted.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce and Steve compare notes on their concerns about JARVIS; Tony takes S.H.I.E.L.D supervision of his JARVIS project as one might expect.

Steve had no sooner stepped out of his meeting with Director Fury than he saw Bruce hurrying towards him, a look of worry creasing his brow and making the two S.H.I.E.L.D agents standing at the door look a little nervous, obviously concerned that the “other guy” might make an appearance.

Steve knew better, however. He wasn’t so much concerned with Bruce’s worry as it related to his condition, but more with what that worry meant. After all, Fury might claim to understand Tony’s work, and to have given Tony the green light – not that Steve expected that anything S.H.I.E.L.D had to say would stop him anyway – but Bruce was a scientist, he’d spent time around Tony, the two men were practically joined at the hip, for Pete’s sake.

So if Bruce was worried…

“Dr. Banner,” he said, and nodded politely.

“Please, call me Bruce,” he said as he always did, and smiled, the expression quickly fading.

Steve, struggling as he always did to address Bruce so informally, nodded again.

“Fury said you were coming by,” Bruce said, waving absently in the general direction of the boardroom Steve had just left, where he’d sat down and had Fury grill him for a good half an hour about his encounter with Tony and – he got the sense more importantly – JARVIS.

“Yes. Fury took your suggestions very seriously.”

Bruce nodded as Steve had. “Well, that’s good.” Idle conversation, Steve had noticed, was not something Bruce seemed to be comfortable with. Steve supposed that, after spending so long trying to actively stay away people to avoid hurting them accidentally, one got a little rusty with their small talk.

“Do you mind me asking what those concerns were, Dr. Ban – Bruce?” asked Steve. He was careful to couch the question in polite terms, not wanting to be impertinent. As a man of science, Steve wanted to know Bruce’s objections.

“They’re not really…relevant,” said Bruce, and he sounded uneasy, twisting his hands together, staring down at the ground and not meeting Steve’s eyes.

“Since Fury’s assigned me to supervising Stark’s android project, I think it would be helpful for me to understand why you brought it up in the first place,” said Steve. The words came off far more like an order than Steve meant it to and he flinched a bit.

Bruce gave a sigh and, removing his glasses, folded them carefully and tucked them into his shirt pocket before going on.

“First, can I ask why you object? Because I can see that you obviously do,” he added, beginning to worry his cuff, still not looking up at Steve.

“I don’t-” began Steve, but Bruce cut him off.

“Please, tell me your concerns. You’re right – we’re both involved here, and so if we started sharing information it would probably make things go…smoother. And the other guy and I are big fans of things going smoothly,” he added, with a tiny quirk of a mocking smile and enough self-deprecation to make Steve pity him.

Steve thought it would be best to be honest with Bruce. “He’s creating life. I don’t like that. Don’t trust it, really. Tony Stark may be a good man, but his ego is letting him play God and if there’s one man who shouldn’t be playing God, it’s Tony Stark,” said Steve.

Bruce nodded, worrying at his cuff again. “His ego worries me, too, but not for the same reason,” he said. He paused for a long time before he went on, and Steve made no attempt to hurry him along. “I think we both know that Tony considers himself the most brilliant human mind to ever exist.”

Steve couldn’t help but laugh a little bit at that. Bruce, quirking another little smile, went on.

“Because he thinks – quite reasonably, really – that he’s brilliant, he doesn’t do the whole risk assessment thing. If you could see the statistics JARVIS has compiled calculating the number of times Tony should’ve died as a result of doing all the stupid, reckless things he’s ever done, you’d understand that,” said Bruce.

Steve didn’t think he needed to see those stats to understand that Tony’s behaviour was foolhardy to the point of being dangerous and self-destructive. However, he let Bruce go on.

“Point is, I’m worried that he’ll…go too far with JARVIS,” said Bruce, and stared resolutely at the floor, not raising his eyes to meet Steve’s gaze. “That his ego will make him go too far, and that he won’t consider the risks.”

“What, are you worried that he’ll create some…weapon out of JARVIS?” asked Steve, anxiety beginning to make his stomach churn as he took in Bruce’s uneasy stance, how he was now fiddling with the band of his watch.

“No, no, not a weapon,” said Bruce, the denial tumbling out of his mouth so fast the words nearly blended into one. “Not that.”

Steve was confused and Bruce, seeming to sense this, gave another sigh and looked up. “Look, that’s just my concern. Yours is perfectly valid, too. Either way, our concerns aren’t going to matter very much to Tony.”

Now it was Steve’s turn to sigh much as Bruce had. “That’s probably true.”

It got him a much bigger smile from Bruce. The happiness still on his face, Bruce asked, “What’s S.H.I.E.L.D going to do about JARVIS, then?”

“Director Fury said that I’m to supervise Stark’s project,” said Steve. “I’ll be dropping in on him again today, and whenever Fury feels it’s necessary.”

Bruce chuckled. “Ooh, I bet Tony’s going to love that.”

Steve detected more than a hint of sarcasm in Bruce’s voice.

There was a little pause.

“Can I come with you?” asked Bruce, his voice quiet but eager.

“Please,” said Steve, relieved to have the company.

 

****

 

“Security breach, JARVIS,” said Tony, at his workbench once again, this time his fingers manipulating a hologram of some piece of what Steve thought he could identify as circuitry. He looked up at Steve and Bruce as they entered his lab, but continued speaking aloud to the A.I. “Do something about it.”

“They used Ms. Potts’s security code, sir,” JARVIS returned, sounding a little weary but still very patient.

“And what, you couldn’t see that it wasn’t Pepper?” said Tony.

“I could, sir, and so I warned you. But I can’t deactivate it, sir.”

“And why not?” retorted Tony, peering out through the hologram at the two of them.

“Because at some point it might actually be Ms. Potts, sir,” replied JARVIS.

Tony smirked very briefly before turning his attention to Steve and Bruce. Bruce, lagging somewhat behind Steve, seemed a little timid of coming out from behind him. Instead, he went over to a bench and, giving a flick of his finger, conjured up a hologram of the same thing Tony was looking at. At a closer distance, Steve noted that it was in the shape of a hand.

“Back again, Captain Rogers?” said Steve. “It’s been what, five hours since you were last here?”

“Five hours, fifteen minutes, and forty-three seconds, to be precise, sir,” corrected JARVIS, seeming to preempt Tony’s query of the exact time that had elapsed since Steve had left.

“Something tells me that this isn’t a happy coincidence,” said Tony, and his tone positively dripped with sarcasm. “Maybe due to the fact that you broke in here using Pepper’s codes and brought with you Brutus himself. Really, don’t turn your back on him, he’ll stab you twenty-three times and-”

“Tony,” said Bruce, giving a sigh.

“Dr. Banner,” said Tony, mocking his tone. However, his teasing was light and though it had a malicious edge, it had an affectionate one, too. “You know, I’m surprised you had the nerve to come here again. After all I’ve done for you, you go running to Fury? For shame, Dr. Banner, for shame.”

Steve tried desperately not to roll his eyes as Tony tsked disapprovingly.

“And to think I was going to let you design the-”

Steve had had enough and so cut over Tony, interrupting him. “Mr. Stark, Director Fury instructed me that I am to sit in on your work at times he feels appropriate. S.H.I.E.L.D will not curtail your experiments but-”

“Is going to spy on me,” Tony interjected. His teasing humour was gone now, any friendliness he’d had with Bruce going up in smoke as he glared right into Steve’s face, as if challenging him to contradict him. “Forgive me if I’m not too happy about Fury looking over my shoulder while I design my own damn android. Actually, forgive me if I say no – you can’t watch me, this is my personal business, nothing to do with S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“Then Fury’s going to shut the entire program down. Confiscate everything. He’s threatening to deactivate JARVIS, too.”

Tony reacted to the threat exactly the way Steve expected him to. Straightening up, he glared right at Steve. “Excuse me?”

“That’s the deal,” said Steve, and crossed his arms.

Tony mimicked the gesture. “You’re going to babysit me?”

“’Supervise’ is the word that Director Fury used, but considering your level of maturity, I’d say ‘babysit’ is a more appropriate one,” replied Steve. “His instructions were that I would sit in on any tests of the new android.”

“Just you? Not Judas over there, too?” said Tony, pointing at Bruce, who rolled his eyes but did not look entirely unhappy. “What, Fury sent someone who can’t tell a laptop from a toaster to supervise the creation of the first ever truly intelligent android?”

Steve did not rise to Tony’s quip. Instead, he leveled as even a glance as he could at Tony. “Do we have a deal, Stark?”

“Fine, but if I see you touching anything-” began Tony.

“I will supervise only.”

Tony ground his teeth, his jaw appearing to be clenched so tight it looked as though his molars would be dust before long. “Fine. Do what you want. Sit on a goddamn stool and watch me work. You won’t understand it anyway. See if I care.”

His tirade sounded like that of a petulant child. Though, Steve supposed, that was exactly what he was. He often wondered how Pepper managed to put up with him as well as she did.

“He’s got a heart of gold under the layers of ego, sarcasm, and pride,” she explained.

Steve knew she was right, but usually found it hard to see Tony as anything other than rebellious teenager in a forty-something body who had somehow managed to land the brightest mind of anyone on the planet.

Tony, meanwhile, seemed to have noticed that Bruce, while Tony was occupied with bickering with Steve, had begun to examine the hologram, using the tips of his fingers to twist and turn it. Currently, he had his palm pressed up against it, and Steve noted absently that the holographic fingers were slim and elegant, and a bit longer than Bruce’s.

“Whoa, no. You don’t get to look at that, not anymore. JARVIS, ruin his fun,” said Tony, and pointed.

JARVIS obeyed immediately, and the hologram before Bruce vanished.

“Not what I meant, JARVIS. You know, show him that I’m pissed. Go on, do it, if it’s not too distasteful for your gentlemanly manners,” he mocked, and Steve wondered at the fact that Tony could tease his own A.I.

“How terribly crude of you, sir,” sighed JARVIS, but, in a moment, the hand-shaped hologram was back, only this time it had four fingers curled into a fist and the middle one raised – flipping Bruce off.

Steve could not help the derisive snort that escaped him, but Bruce actually chuckled, the sound quiet but full of amusement.

“I should probably go, anyway. I’ve got a timed experiment running at the S.H.I.E.LD lab,” said Bruce, giving Tony a small smile. Tony returned it with a bigger and snarkier one of his own.

“Traitor!” Tony called after him, instead of a goodbye.

Bruce, giving a little wave, departed, leaving Steve alone with Tony.

And JARVIS, of course. Steve was reminded of his unsettling presence when he heard the A.I. speak up.

“Shall I pull up the specs again, sir?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve assists Tony much to Tony's doubtfulness; JARVIS is more impressed than Tony is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the way, the comic that is mentioned (No. 39 of Tales of Suspense), was actually the first appearance of Iron Man.

“Are you just going to sit there?”

Tony had asked that question about six or seven times in the past hour, and Steve was getting tired of hearing it. He was seated in the lab on a stool, carefully supervising Tony as he worked. Tony had given him a wrench to hold after Steve had reached out and touched a small piece of circuitry and subsequently knocked it to the floor and broken it – “Here,” he had said, and shoved it in his hands, “I need you to hold this for about six hours.” – likely just to keep him from touching anything again.

Steve opened his mouth, about to reply, when JARVIS cut in:

“I believe he is sitting there because you told him to exactly seven times, sir.”

“Hey! No snarkiness from you, Jarv. Though I built you better than that,” retorted Tony.

“Yes, because you are, yourself, such a model of polite gravity, sir,” retorted JARVIS.

Steve chuckled, looking up and half-expecting to see a human source of the voice. Instead, he was confronted with Tony smirking at the empty air. Giving a bit of a shudder, he looked back down at the wrench, turning it over in his hands as he heard Tony swear as he, still smiling up at the ceiling, tripped and knocked his knee on his desk.

As Tony went back to work, Steve went back to supervising, meaning that he sat on the stool and stared at Tony tinkering away with whatever that thing was on his workbench. He’d been ordered by Director Fury to join Tony at least once every week, and since it had been precisely one week since he’d last dropped in – that time with Bruce, when Tony had grudgingly accepted supervision – he’d shown up this morning, had been escorted in by a harried and exhausted-looking Pepper, and been greeted with an expected amount of animosity by Tony.

Now, as he sat, he listened carefully to the dialogue passing in snippets between Tony and JARVIS.

In all honesty, Steve was stunned by the way JARVIS and Tony communicated. Not being party to how the Iron Man suit worked, and not being savvy in the slightest about technology, he’d never really heard or paid attention to the conversations between JARVIS and Tony.

But since it was his job to do so now, he listened.

It was a remarkably ordinary conversation, really, full of technical lingo and robotic mumbo-jumbo that was lost on Steve.

But it was the ordinariness of the conversation that got to him. Tony and JARVIS spoke like equals, with the exception of the “sir” JARVIS tacked onto his words to Tony.

They discussed technology, and Steve was shocked to hear Tony actually taking advice from JARVIS. Not only that, but they spoke as two people would, trading snarky, sarcastic insults and dry witticisms.

Steve wasn’t sure if that made him more or less comfortable with the idea that soon an equally acerbic JARVIS might soon be wandering around, accompanying Tony. He tried to imagine what JARVIS would look like, and was unable to.

How would Tony design him, he wondered? Tall or short? Thin or fat? Would he even look human?

Tony’s irritated voice snapped him out of his reverie.

“Listen, I just can’t work with you staring at me any longer. I’m flattered, but it’s getting creepy,” said Tony. Steve gave him as disdainful a look as he could manage. “You want a comic book or something? I’ve got _Tales of Suspense,_ No. 39 _._ It’s not the best, but they included me and so I think that any comic book that includes the invincible Iron Man should be required reading for-”

Steve didn’t think he could let Tony talk for any longer without actually punching him in the face, and so interrupted.

“If you’re sick of me watching, I could assist,” he suggested.

“And go running back to Fury with all my secrets? Nice try, Rogers,” Tony snorted, looking up at Steve and rolling his eyes.

“As you’ve said so many times, I’m no good with computers. You can show me things, but I won’t understand it,” Steve countered, and he was being completely truthful. Try as he might to give Director Fury an accurate report of what he’d seen, he did not doubt that all he would be able to say was “the android will run on some form of electricity”. He began to wonder why Fury had assigned him to the case, and not someone like Bruce.

“I dunno, Cap. That sounds like something someone who wanted to spy would say,” said Tony, both his tone and the look he was giving Steve shrewd and calculating.

“Unlike you, I’m not that conniving,” retorted Steve.

“Oh, we’ve descended into personal attacks, have we? Lovely,” snapped Tony. “Let me tell you, granddad, for someone spying on someone else’s private experiments, you’ve got one hell of a lot of nerve calling me-”

“I’m sure you can take Captain Rogers’s promise as gospel, sir,” said JARVIS, cutting in smoothly. “He, unlike some, is a man of his word.”

Steve smiled up at the air as Tony had, wondering if JARVIS could see his gratitude. It felt strange to be grateful, but he was.

“Are you saying I’m not a man of my word, JARVIS?” replied Tony.

“Of course not, sir. I would never do that.”

Steve shook his head in wonderment. JARVIS’s tone was light. Sarcastic. Not just sarcastic, but a light, nuanced sarcasm. Steve couldn’t help but admire Tony a bit for it. Whatever JARVIS’s true mental capabilities were, his ability so perfectly replicate that human irony was impressive.

“Besides, sir, another pair of hands might be helpful, especially since wiring the biometric circuits will be…delicate,” JARVIS went on.

Was JARVIS really sticking up for him? The idea was strange to say the least, and made Steve shift uncomfortably on his chair. He didn’t know why the A.I. was doing it, even if JARVIS could have a reason – was he intelligent enough?

Tony seemed to wonder this, too, because he narrowed his eyes and said: “You want Captain Butterfingers to assist? You never get Pepper to help, even though sometimes I could use it.”

“Because I would not wish to disturb Miss Potts, sir,” replied JARVIS. “She works hard enough already, sir.”

“Why don’t I believe you, Jarv?”

“I cannot imagine, sir.” JARVIS sounded serene, and Tony didn’t look convinced.

Steve wasn’t sure he was convinced, either. But surely JARVIS couldn’t be lying. That would be too human. Steve wondered, and in wondering felt nervous, that perhaps JARVIS was quite a bit more intelligent than the average person took him for. Perhaps he really was truly an artificial intelligence, complete with human emotion and human deception.

That made the possibility of his becoming an android all the more worrying.

He set these worries aside for the moment as Tony, giving a sigh, waved him forward. Steve was able to see for the first time what exactly Tony was working on.

It was an arm. Or the frame of an arm, for it appeared to be composed of metal bone and wire sinew. A distinctly human-shaped arm, Steve noted, and long and slender. It would belong to a man, no doubt, and a tall one at that, based on its length.

That would be a fact that would go in the report.

“Here,” said Tony. “Hold this.”

He handed him a small metal pick.

“Carefully draw back these wires,” Tony instructed, pointing to a bundle of wires near the crook of the – JARVIS’s, he realized with a start – elbow. “And don’t let the pick touch this wire.”

He now gestured to a long red wire that Steve could see ran all the way down the arm and, splitting into five, ended in the tips of the fingers.

“Why not?” asked Steve.

Tony tolled his eyes but JARVIS politely obliged him with an answer.

“That’s a nerve ending, Captain. You would trigger a reflex if you touched it,” he said.

Steve was savvy enough to know why that might be problematic. And so, taking a cue from Tony, he reached down and, as delicately as he could, drew back the wires. Tony was at his side much faster than he’d thought possible and, on the end of a long pair of forceps, held a small chip which he carefully inserted into the area Steve’s pick had revealed.

Steve, glancing over at Tony, was surprised by what he saw. To look at Tony, you wouldn’t think he could be so delicate, so measured. But now Tony was entirely focused on the task at hand, his movements slow and exquisitely precise.

“Now, remove the pick,” said Tony.

Steve obeyed, and saw Tony smirk at how quickly he had followed Tony’s instruction.

“Now what?”

“Touch the pick to the pad of the first finger. Gently, or it might punch you in the face,” said Tony, and the look in his eyes told Steve he probably wouldn’t mind if it did.

Steve, reaching forward, touched just the tip of the pick to the pad of the finger, exerting as little pressure as he could.

The finger twitched and flexed, and made Steve jump.

“Decent, for a senior,” said Tony, when Steve looked up to see how he had done. He looked grudgingly pleased. “Thought for sure it would at least spasm.”

“Thanks, Stark.”

“Very well done, sir,” JARVIS commended, interjecting just as Tony rolled his eyes yet again. He sounded pleased, but there was no reluctance in his tone. He sounded genuine.

“Thank you, JARVIS,” said Steve, for the first time flattered and not unnerved by the A.I.

“Not at all, sir.”


End file.
